Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 30
August 11, 2023
The Meg author Steve Alten recalls ‘killing off’ critic and how he really feels about loyal Megheads
The fact that The Meg has spawned a sequel will be no surprise to those long-dedicated fans of the franchise, as the map for sequels has already been set out in the source material; a series of deep-diving adventure novels by Steve Alten, who spoke with Metro.co.uk about the past and future of the franchise on both the screen and page.
Alten, 63, first kicked off The Meg franchise back in 1997 with the publication of the first novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror. From there, began a long road to the big screen that saw the likes of Guillermo del Toro and Eli Roth come and go – but you can’t keep a good shark project down.
From Jaws to Deep Blue Sea, there’s always been a fascination with those black-eyed fish with a sharp set of teeth, something that began for Alten at a very young age.
‘When I was younger. I used to love to read, you know, picture books with dinosaurs and marine reptiles, and I know that the marine reptiles were always the ones that were much cooler to me because they had these sharp teeth, and that’s before I even learned about the big shark that came around the Miocene period over 30 million years ago.’
Similar to most of us with a love of sharks, that fascination only grew with the publication of Peter Benchley’s Jaws novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film adaptation.
‘I read Jaws when I was 15 and then decided I wanted to read as much as I could about real shark attacks and real great whites.
There was always a little blurb with a black and white photo of scientists sitting in a big jaw on the Smithsonian and that led me to the Megalodon.’
That startling image of a giant set of gnashers may have caught the imagination of the young Alten, leading him to discover more about the Megalodon, but finding there was little else to read at the time, the Meg receded to the depths of his imagination, only to be reawakened some 20 years later.
After pursuing a career in sports administration and coaching, Alten was struck by a Time Magazine article featuring a deep water creature on the cover, an Anglerfish, with the article going even further into the secret world beneath the depths, and chiefly the Mariana trench.
‘Here was this 1,500-mile long, 40-mile wide, seven-mile deep gorge that was unexplored,’ Alten explains.
‘And if there were hydrothermal events in it which I was pretty sure there was, it just made sense to me that if you got all this mineralized hot water it’s rising out at the bottom at some point. It’s going to coagulate and form a ceiling of soot above it. Which would seal in the warmth and so that’s what I wrote about,’ – an ideal concept for envisioning a world where long-thought-extinct species could survive.
While a work of fiction Alten makes sure to do his research, and the idea of life forms that deep in the ocean has become less and less of a hypothetical fantasy since his original novel was published back in 1997 – although it’s doubtful a giant prehistoric beast is roaming around down there.
At the time, some critics were quick to point out the seemingly ridiculous notions of life deep in the ocean in Alten’s novels, with Alten saying one LA Times writer in particular ‘ripped it apart, everything from the name Meg to claiming that there were hydrothermal events at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.’
The impressive jaws of the Megladon (Picture: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)‘I didn’t know it was real, but I wrote it as it was, and then it turned out to be true. So I wrote that critic into the sequel novel [The Trench] and had him killed off – anyone that wrote a bad review of The Meg got killed in The Trench,’ he recalled.
August 10, 2023
August 9, 2023
Guest Post: Fort Myers Beach a paradise lost by Dr. Dave Davis
Two Fort Myers business owners embrace in the midst of the wreckage of their small town, devastated by Hurricane Ian less than a year ago. Dave Davis shares his experience, as a part-time resident of the popular vacation destination.
Amy Beth Bennett / Torstar file photo“Oh, my God,” my wife said, under her breath, not once but dozens of times.
Two weeks ago, we were driving along Fort Myers Beach, roughly nine months after it was hit by hurricane Ian. No, not hit; “hit” implies a glancing blow, a side-swipe; better to say overwhelmed. On our drive, we saw dozens and dozens of homes, virtually every one of them — some in the several million-dollar range, some under a hundred thousand, devastated. Mounds of debris. Many lots cleared entirely, empty of all but the pylons the houses sat on. Restaurants — all gone. Churches, too. Plazas and shops, gone. Many condominiums, some as high as 20 stories, look fine a block away as though residents could step right back into them. Up close, we saw right through them, from the road to the beach; residents wouldn’t be returning any time soon. I stopped and took a picture at the north end of the island, a kind of honky-tonk downtown, previously filled with colourful T-shirt and surf shops, little cafés, ice-cream and pizza places, and a giant pier reaching out into the Gulf. All gone, the gift of hurricane Ian. Tears crept into my eyes, clouding the picture.
We are 35-year owners of a tiny slice of this former paradise, not able to visit it since the hurricane.
You may not recall the event that devastated our beach. To be fair, we’ve had more than our share of outside-normal climate events this year — drought, floods, forest fires, record-breaking temperatures, and Ian — a Category Five hurricane, the third-costliest weather disaster on record (over 100 billion dollars and counting) and the deadliest hurricane to strike Florida since 1935.
On Sept. 28 last year, residents along the Gulf Coast were advised that Ian was headed toward the southwestern reaches of Florida. They had days to watch it as it made its way across the Atlantic from West Africa, striking Cuba among other locations. Some models had Fort Myers Beach, a seven-mile-long island just off the coast, as its target. Many models did not, and many residents decided to ride it out. The upstairs neighbour in our condo was one of them. He video-recorded the landfall of the hurricane as it inundated the entire island, drowning it in seven feet-plus of water, tossing boats and cars like toddlers’ toys, bending the palm trees in two, ripping out foundations and plantings and trees, breaking over seawalls, smashing through windows and walls.
Two weeks’ later and near the end of our holiday, I drive up the island, on my own this time. I notice some things that, overwhelmed initially, we didn’t notice on our first drive. Perhaps my cheerier, post-holiday mood allows me to see them. Construction workers are everywhere. A couple hotels have reopened; another one, brand new, will soon accept customers. Bulldozers have cleared much of the debris — the beach is almost pristine, many houses gone. A handful of food trucks replace the little restaurants and cafés. I see a giant “FOOD PANTRY” sign, marking a huge tent, located where a church once sat. And there’s this: as I drive by a severely damaged house, I notice a woman emerging from her swimming pool, towelling off. A small bulldozer, manned I think by her husband, is clearing the property only feet away from her. She waves and smiles, as though saying, “We’ll get there, just give us time.”
For a second, the pessimist in me thinks she doesn’t know what’s ahead for her, or for that matter, the planet. The optimist in me sees resilience and hope in the wave and the restoration, a symbolic hope in the meaning of nine months. On this day, in this moment, the optimist wins.
Dave Davis is a retired family doc and writer. His novels, A Potters Tale and The Last Immortal have won international awards. His latest, Two Page Tales, cowrote with the Writers in Paradise, is an anthology of short stories. All of them are available on Amazon. Visit drdavedavis.com
via The Hamilton Spectator
August 7, 2023
New York Times Review: ‘Meg 2: The Trench’ Review: Gleefully Jumping the Shark
Warner Bros. Pictures/CMC PicturesMeg 2: The TrenchDirected by Ben WheatleyAction, Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi, ThrillerPG-131h 56mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.
A cute dog, an 8-year-old girl and countless sunbathing beachgoers survived “The Meg” (2018) miraculously unharmed. The British filmmaker Ben Wheatley, who steps into the director’s chair for “Meg 2: The Trench,” has racked up stomach-turning body counts (including dogs) in his darkly comic thrillers like “Down Terrace,” “Kill List” and “Free Fire,” so it seems only fair that his take on a killer-shark movie would lean a bit more vicious.But “Meg 2,” like the first, maintains a box office-friendly PG-13 rating, so Wheatley is necessarily limited in how much carnage he is permitted to depict. Nevertheless, he finds many creative ways to butcher bad guys and side characters that hit the same horror-adjacent pleasure centers. There’s a shot from the point of view of a shark’s mouth as it’s eating people. I call that good directing.
The first “Meg,” with its story of a long-extinct carnivore re-emerging to wreak havoc among scientists, was reminiscent of “Jurassic Park.” “Meg 2” takes the natural next step and borrows from “The Lost World.” The shark-hunting, ocean-protecting hero Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) now has a stepdaughter (Sophia Cai) to protect, while the repertoire of prehistoric predators on the hunt has been richly expanded to include several land-roaming dinosaurs and (why not?) a giant squid. Of course, any shark movie will inevitably live in the shadow of “Jaws.” Wheatley has fun with it by nodding playfully to “Jaws 2.”
The director having fun is the presiding feeling here — which may account for why the movie is so frequently amusing, and occasionally delightful. It has a light, irreverent tone that sometimes verges on parodic, as when a villain’s archly confident victory speech is disrupted by a shark appearance straight out of “Deep Blue Sea,” or when a splashy pink title card cheerfully informs us that the populated area about to be descended upon by a trio of sharks is called “Fun Island.” Just how close does the movie get to full-blown parody? At one point, Statham literally jumps a shark.
It’s not that the first “Meg” was particularly serious: It contained comic relief, but the humor felt more studio-mandated. “Meg 2” has a spark of wit that feels looser and more appropriate to the material. The supporting cast — especially Page Kennedy and Cliff Curtis as scientists forced to join the action — are offered much more freedom to cut loose and get silly, while certain sight gags have a verve that really pops (including an escalating bit that has more and more of our heroes wandering into the same armed holdup). No dogs come to harm in this one either, it should be said. There’s enough madcap mayhem elsewhere that any more would have been overkill.
Meg 2: The Trench
Rated PG-13 for intense action, mild language and excessive shark violence. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters.
via New York Times
August 6, 2023
Meg 2: The Trench' Swims Toward Impressive Global Box Office Debut
Meg 2: The Trench is here to wreak havoc along the shoreline, starting its box office run with a global debut of $142 million. Out of that impressive number, $30 million was earned domestically and $112 million internationally, as the sequel marks one of the final big releases of this summer movie season. Ben Wheatley was in charge of directing the second installment, after John Turteltaub helmed The Meg five years ago. The depths of the ocean are incredibly unpredictable, and the team of scientists featured in the franchise never know what to expect once they dive into the darkness of the sea.
In the sequel, Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) finds himself in bigger problems than the last time, as several giant creatures threaten the humans near the shoreline across different beaches. While the previous movie saw him going up against only a couple of Megs, the sequel makes a quick job of establishing that there's so much more at stake in this adventure. After an illegal mining operation is discovered in the Mariana Trench, the people in charge of it decide to blow up it up, creating an opening for the creatures that lived down there to explore the surface, and it's up to Jonas' team to stop the sea monsters before they could deal more damage.
By comparison, when the first movie introduced audiences to this new universe where prehistoric giant creatures were still alive in the depths of the ocean, The Meg earned $45 million at the domestic box office during its debut. The numbers were surprising, as analysts didn't expect the movie to make such an impact among the general audience. But the marketing that heavily featured the giant shark in mundane situations quickly gained the viewers' interest, creating a success so satisfying for Warner Bros. that it led to a sequel.
via Collider
check out Collider's interview with Ben Wheatley below:
August 5, 2023
The Meg 2: The Trench!
Yes, Meg 2: The Trench plans to make waves during the summertime box office. And director Ben Wheatley (Ideal, Doctor Who, Rebecca) who took the helm of the sequel to 2018’s The Meg promises an epic, overarching scope when it comes to the science fiction, horror and adventure mash-up!
August 4, 2023
The Meg creator Steve Alten boards a shark-themed Enter the Popverse
August 3, 2023
August 2, 2023
Meg 2: The Trench Streaming Release Date Rumors
The Meg 2: The Trench streaming release is hotly anticipated as it offers a thrilling adventure, and viewers are wondering when they can start streaming the movie.
It is a sequel to 2018’s monstrous shark movie, The Meg, which dives even deeper into the origins of the Megalodons. It pits multiple colossal, prehistoric sharks against Jason Statham’s Jonas. So, it’s understandable why fans are so eager to stream the film. Here’s when Meg 2: The Trench could be coming out online.
However, this date isn’t confirmed yet.
Meg 2: The Trench is scheduled to hit theaters on August 4, 2023, and its streaming release date will only be revealed after that. However, considering that it is a Warner Bros. Discovery movie, we can predict that the film will become available to stream between 60-90 days after its theatrical release.
The Flash is also reportedly following a similar theatrical and streaming release pattern. So, we should expect Meg 2: The Trench to swim in the same direction and arrive on MAX sometime in November 2023, if not slightly earlier.
This date is an estimation based on the information we have so far. ComingSoon will provide an update to this story once we receive official details.
Meg 2: The Trench brings Jason Statham as Jonas alongside Wu Jing, Sienna Guillory, Cliff Curtis, Skyler Samuels, Page Kennedy, Shuya Sophia Cai, and Sergio Peris-Mencheta.
via Coming Soon
July 31, 2023
FREE JULY 31 - AUGUST 4 - Writing Treatments to Sell by Kenneth Atchity and Chi-Li Wong
Writing treatments thatsell is a first book of its kind devoted entirely to the function of treatmentsin film and TV and how to write and present effective ones. The book is acollaboration by Kenneth Atchity and Chi-Li Wong, partners in Atchity Productons.
Kenneth and Chi – MAis sincerely honored by your willingness to share your knowledge and adventurerelating to this new book. So without any further ado here are all ourquestions.
Whatmade you initiate the idea of providing a guide like Writing Treatments to Sell?
Themost frequent question we were getting from clients—novelists as well asitinerant screenwriters was “what is a treatment?” We realized that bookanswering this question would be helpful.
Whowas your target audience?
The book’s target audience is anyone whowants to write or sell a story to the motion picture or television world.
Whoended up putting pen to paper?
Wehave a process where we outline the content together, Chi-Li takes a shot atthe first draft, then Kenneth does the next, etc.
Isthe book specifically targeted for the film industry only?
Although we targeted the book tothe film industry, in the years since it was first published we've learned thatits useful to writers of all kinds—children’s books, novels, etc.—because ithelps them to “get the story straight” before launching into the actualdrafting.
Whya book based specifically on treatments?
Because a treatment is aunique creature that will never itself see publication or production, andtherefore everyone wonders why it even exists.
Whatis a “treatment?”
To quote directly from the book: “A treatment is a relatively brief,loosely narrative written pitch of a story intended for production as a filmfor theatrical exhibition or television broadcast. Written in user-friendly,dramatic, but straightforward and highly visual prose, in the present tense,the treatment highlights in broad strokes your story’s hook, primary characters,acts and action line, setting, point of view, and most dramatic scenes andturning points.” The book goes into detail about the meaning of each phrase inthis definition, distinguishing the treatment from “coverage,” “synopsis,”“outlines,” among others.
TheStory Merchant itself is all about content, branding and consultation in theentertainment and media arena. How does this book tie into the bigger plan ofStory Merchant?
This book, like Atchity’s How to Publish Your Novel or Write Time: A Guide to the CreativeProcess, from Vision through Revision isa tool by which the Story Merchant shares experience in the commercial world ofstories with aspiring storytellers.
Doesreading the book create a sense of more business for Story Merchant or is itmore directed towards internal growth for each and every writer / screenwriter?
We can’t spend time with every storyteller out there who needsguidance, so we wrote this book to helpanyone who’s motivated enough to buy it—now available in ebook for the firsttime. But that’s not to say Story Merchant has found coaching clients throughthis and Atchity’s other books.
Beingan aspiring author myself, I find that optimism and endurance are two of themain things to hold onto while craving for acknowledgement towards your ownwork, what is your advice towards fellow aspirers who look up to yourselves forhope?
We’ve learned that hope is great, but determination is even better,when it comes to success. Just keep working on your career, whether you’re in agood mood or not, whether you’re hopeful or not. Work is the only sure road tosuccess.
In general how has publishing and moving into the entertainment industrychanged for writers. I mean – I myself sometimes wish that I had startedwriting ten years earlier as it seems as if the market might have been lesschaotic. In today’s time it’s as if everyone can put pen to paper and callthemselves an author. How do you define the word author, writer?
Awriter is someone who WRITES, and who cares enough about her writing to find anaudience for it. While everything else has changed, that definition has notchanged and will not change.
Last but not least, what else can people look forward to? Being in the industryyou are it is important to recreate your image and stay in the zone withcurrent trends, how do you intend on moving forward while carrying the weightof years and years’ experience in the existing field? How do you mould yourselfto be eye catching and present in the future?
We've just launched Story Merchant Academy a brand new online course designed for writers to improve their storytelling. Sign Up Now
As always, thanks a lot for your presence and willingness toShare.
Thanks for providing thiswonderful forum.
Posted byNadine Maritz
